Boss not Bosshttp://bossnotboss.com Boss Not Boss is meant to inspire by way of showing graphic design, music, art, photography, animation, original interviews, and a host of other interestsFri, 09 May 2014 18:59:41 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3Noma Barhttp://bossnotboss.com/2014/05/noma-bar/ http://bossnotboss.com/2014/05/noma-bar/#commentsFri, 09 May 2014 18:34:30 +0000Christopherhttp://bossnotboss.com/?p=7237

Noma Bar was born in Israel in ’73 and his simple illustrations of simple shapes in tandem with negative space are incredible.

He studied graphic design at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and has been publish a zillion times in a zillion magazines. The man has even put out two books! I know that a ton of designers have put out books, but it’s still amazing. How many books do you have out? That’s what I thought.

Obviously what makes his work so great is that he’s able to capture so much with so little. Wether that’s capturing a story, a personality, or an idea. I love how his work, while simple and easy to digest, makes you think. What makes his work stand out isn’t what he puts on the page but more what’s triggered in the viewer by what’s on the page (like that whole ‘art happens within the viewer, not on the canvas’). You’re forced to think about it.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that a design shouldn’t make you think (read Don’t Make Me Think. just do it), but in that case of Noma Bar I think it works.

HOWEVER some of his work can be ‘once you’ve seen one you have seen them all’. Just make a head shape and put a reference to that person where the eye should go. It’s very clever the first few times, then it’s gets to be a bit “c’mon, Noma. don’t you have more?”

You should still be going out of your way to check out his work and learn that you don’t have to say much to say a lot.

A friend of mine said she was going to see Caravan Palace at Neumos the other night. When I asked who they were I got, “You don’t know electro swing!!?!?!” and linked me to their video for ‘rock it for me’ and it’s awesome.

Swing is one of the best genres on the planet, but electronic biz is hit or miss w me. Turns out electro swing is also hit or miss so be warned. Love swing? might not care for electro swing. Listening to electro swing when your girlfriend comes home? No, she won’t want to dance with you.

Something you probably didn’t know about boy genius Nash Turley is that he’s a PhD student of evolutionary ecology at the University of Toronto. On his site, nashturley.org, he says, “My research focuses on the evolutionary ecology of species interactions, usually involving plants and herbivores.” Along with that he’s been taking photos during his research and I think it’s completely boss that Nash has developed this bonus hobby through his studies.

If your mouth isn’t already watering after learning that Nash pursues a solid amount of activities, then you should know he ALSO started a tumblr: Natural History Sketches. He’s populated it w a few drawings of bugs that look to have been drawn by a man who’s half awake from a syphilitic nightmare of itchy nature. I anticipate birds to join the collection as well as a bat probably. :)

Now go see way more of Nash’s photos (many of which are not bugs) on his site and send him a message of love and warmth made comfortable through the wonder of cyber anonymity.

Sometimes you just gotta hear the sweet sound of a woman’s voice—so I made a mix just for that :) Here’s a small collection of tracks that I’ve been cranking w some fine ladies bringing up the vocals (and one dude in there, but whatevers)

Simon Stalenhag has gotten his hands on a heap of projects and it’s worth your time to check out each one! But even though Simon’s pumping out amazing work in multiple mediums, some solid info on the guy is scarce. So I’ll just do what every other article about him as done and paste-in the one paragraph from his ‘about’ page:

“I’ve been involved with a lot of different projects, ranging from films, commercials and book covers to art directing and concepting for video games. I’m also the second half of Pixeltruss (the other half being Tommy Salomonsson), who recently released the 16-bit platformer Ripple Dot Zero.”

I am a complete sucker for some sweet sweet atmospheric perspective, and when I laid eyes on Simon’s work, my pupils grew to 5x their size–a reaction that used to be more common when I was a fat kid seeing my mom and just brought home hotpockets. Now the pupil-grow is a seldom happening, reserved only for great talent (and chocolate milk). It should also be noted that Simon is an ace with colors and lighting. Everything in the scene is so well captured and works as a cohesive whole; something that can be quite difficult to nail.

Another of Simon’s projects that you’d be a fool to ignore is Pixeltruss! If you know me in real life, then you probably know making video games has been a dream of mine since I was 5, so when I learned Simon’s helping make games I had to check it out……and it’s awesome.

Pixeltruss has two games which you can play right now in your internet window. The first of which isn’t worth mentioning and the second, Ripple Dot Zero, is incredible (if you’re into 16bit era sidescrollers [which you are]). In PixelTruss, Simon does the art and music while Tommy is more of the dev persuasion. Peep the Ripple Dot Zero trailer at the end of the post or skip two minutes into the future and just start playing it here (I bet you can’t find ALL the secret areas :P).

Perhaps we’ve made an error leaving you guys for so long. If you thought we were dead: you can go die because we’re so very ALIVE!! (and so damn busy)

Actually, Selena hasn’t really been a part of BossnotBoss for a while, so it’s mostly that I’ve been so damn busy :/

As some of you may know, I’m currently a designer / developer for Xbox One apps at Microsoft and with the Xbox launching soon, everyone’s super busy all the time non-stop. On top of that I’ve also been freelancing like a mad man. But you may rest easy, I’m coming back to you.

What about our instagram? Well that’s dead and we’re no longer updating it. You can still follow Selena and I though. I mostly post pics of projects I’m working on (@christopherlmartin) and Selena mostly posts pics of her cat (@selenagoodwin), so whatever you’re into I guess.

Well I have a lot of posting to catch up on, but I wanted to let you know what was up :) See you kids soon!

Equality Sans is a free “typeface for human rights” developed by Art Director, Caprice Yu, and associate creative director, Steve Peck, who is bathing in awards. Equality Sans is only available in vector format, but the duo is currently looking for help developing an opentype or truetype format.

Just incase you’re not aware: I’m all for equality (sexual preference, race, class, whatever), but when you take a meme and slip some type in the background and act like it’s a great deed while at the same time it looks like a sad student project—I gotta drop a blog rant.

For a couple of creative directors, this is one of the least creative things I’ve seen. When there’s more than one letter at a time (all examples), the message becomes overbearing and looses meaning to the point that when I see it now, it’s just another thing my brain’s been trained to ignore. I thought it was incredible when, on facebook, nearly everyone in my feed had gone out of their way to change their pic to support equality. It was awesome. But Caprice and Steve have just taken a solid message of support and made it into a thing that shouldn’t have been made. Surely they could’ve thought of a stronger, less lazy, project to show support and promote equality.

You might recall my puppy love over The Webs and how they now only play shows in our memories. Well, on The Webs’ facebook, I asked if there were any current music projects with former members….enter Weird Bug.

Weird Bug is Lilly Morlock (formerly of The Webs) and her man (says FB), David Plell, and they are AWESOME! I made sure to get Selena cranking their EP, Stuck In Beads, right away. By the time of their show, she was bragging about how she’d blasted Weird Bug on loop all day.

While I was grabbing pics and vid durring the show, Selena and I made sure that everyone in the room knew that we were the biggest Weird Bug fans that had ever been and ever would be by screaming the loudest. “Be the loudest”, that’s what my papa always told me.

Peep these pics I snagged and this big gif I rolled up, then blast some Weird Bug. Can’t wait to see you at their next show!

Up-and-coming designer, Konrad Syblilski, caught me with his simple design concept for RiceNoir Sake. There’s something special in the sweet way he takes a simple idea, reification, to create the sake’s logo mark and how it is used seamlessly when taken to the package design. Not everything in Konrad’s portfolio is this golden, but there’s some super solid stuff (SSS) there even in such a young body of work.

Also, his site is beautifully built using something called Berta, which I’m still researching but seems like an interesting concept, especially for designers who aren’t quite developers.

These wondrous paintings were done in a petri dish by Klari Reis, whom I know nothing about. Her site is flash and her ‘about me’ is 4 paragraphs long; a recipe for me to leave. But those shameful mistakes do not carry over to these circles of whimsy she does everyday. She posts a new one everyday!!